Matthew Flinders’ sea voyage journal, A Voyage to Terra Australis was published on 17 July 1814.
Captain Matthew Flinders (1774–1814) was a British navigator and cartographer who led the first circumnavigation of mainland Australia, then called New Holland. He is also credited as being the first person to utilise the name Australia to describe the entirety of the continent including Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania), a title he regarded as being “more agreeable to the ear” than previous names such as Terra Australis. A Voyage to Terra Australis was his sea voyage journal.
Flinders charted much previously unknown coastline, completing and linking together other partial surveys to give the first complete picture accurately depicting Australia as we now know it. His charts were so accurate that some are still in use to this day. By using the term ‘Australia’ in his maps and writings, he helped the word enter common usage.
Departing Australia for England in 1803, Flinders was detained in Mauritius where he remained under arrest for more than six years. During this time he recorded details of his voyages for future publication. Arriving in England in 1810 and in poor health, he immediately resumed work preparing A Voyage to Terra Australis and his maps for publication. In January 1811 approval for publication was given by the Admiralty, but payment was restricted to the atlas and charts sections. Flinders was responsible for funding the major work. Matthew Flinders died, aged 40, on 19 July 1814 from kidney disease and never saw the completed book.
His book was given, as was common at the time, a synoptic description: A Voyage to Terra Australis: undertaken for the purpose of completing the discovery of that vast country, and prosecuted in the years 1801, 1802, and 1803 in His Majesty’s ship the Investigator, and subsequently in the armed vessel Porpoise and Cumberland Schooner. With an account of the shipwreck of the Porpoise, arrival of the Cumberland at Mauritius, and imprisonment of the commander during six years and a half in that island.
Christine Bradfield
Matthew Flinders name is constantly before the people of Geelong in Victoria as we have a girls’ high school named for him and also the highest peak of the nearby You Yangs range is named ‘Flinders Peak’. I have a copy of ‘My Love Must Wait’, which I have not yet read. Have you read it and is it worthy?
Susannah Fullerton
No, I haven’t read it. There’s a nice statue of Flinders in Sydney (fairly recently erected) but I didn’t know there was a school named for him.